Autobiography of mark twain volume 1 epub

The book became an immediate bestseller and was hailed as the capstone of the life's work of America's favorite author. This Reader's Edition, a portable paperback in larger type, republishes the text of the hardcover Autobiography in a form that is convenient for the general reader, without the editorial explanatory notes. As a rule, he generally does not line up writing work until he is desperate for money, and he seems to only be able to write under deadline pressure.

Jane Lampton is Twain's mother. She knows that Twain is a troublemaker in his youth and believes that he deserves whatever retaliation his brother Henry dishes out. Her compassion for others is so great that she defends Satan when some townspeople put her to the test to see if she will go that far. On other occasions, she intervenes on behalf of both people and animals in danger of being beaten.

Jervis Langdon is Olivia Langdon's father. When Twain proposes to Olivia, Langdon checks out Twain's references, who do not speak well of the writer. In the end, Langdon overlooks this fact and allows the marriage. Out of concern for his daughter's welfare, however, he purchases a house in Buffalo, New York, for the new married couple. Henry Rogers is a friend who saves Twain from many swindlers.

He also negotiates with Twain's creditors to keep them from hounding Twain while he is on his lecture tour, earning back the debt incurred by the failure of Twain's publishing company, Webster and Company. Charles L. Webster is Twain's nephew-in-law, whom Twain initially hires to manage one of his investments. Twain loses forty-two thousand dollars on the investment, but does not hold Webster responsible for the loss.

Later, when Twain forms his own publishing company, he offers to put Webster in charge of it. Webster demands a large salary, which Twain thinks is very bold, since Twain himself never got paid to learn a new trade. Twain believes that Webster's initiative will make him rich, and even names the company after him. Although he had intended to use the company only to publish his own books, Twain does end up publishing General Ulysses S.

Grant's memoir. However, by signing a series of bad contracts that Webster's lawyer creates, Twain inadvertently gives away his decision-making power and profits to Webster. Eventually, Webster's mismanagement weakens the business. In an ironic twist, Webster places his trust into another employee, who ends up swindling Webster out of his profits.

When Webster experiences problems from his increasing drug habit, Twain steps in and buys Webster's share of the business for twelve thousand dollars, although the company fails shortly thereafter. The Autobiography of Mark Twain begins with a preface from Twain that states the "frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind is a love letter," and that with his autobiography of mark twain volume 1 epub, he intends to be this frank and honest with his readers.

The book is saturated with references to truth. However, when one compares Twain's autobiographical accounts with real-life events, they do not always match, a fact noted by many reviewers. Indeed, Twain himself admits at the beginning of the work that he does not always get his memories right. He notes he used to remember his brother Henry being burned in a fire when he was a baby.

Twain notes that it was "remarkable that I should cling to the delusion for thirty years that I did remember it—for of course it never happened. Twain himself admits on several occasions he may not be telling the truth. For example, he relates how he sold a dog that was not his so that he could collect his reward. Some of it is true," he writes.

Within the narrative of Twain's life, the concept of truth features prominently. As a child, Twain was a troublemaker and lied to his mother or hid information from her so often that she did not believe him even when he was telling the truth. Twain also discusses the concept of trickery, both his own and others. Overall, Twain seems to support the telling of white lies, but not truly dishonest acts that hurt people.

When Twain hires his nephew-in-law Webster to work for him in his new publishing company, he gives Webster a good salary and names the company after him. However, Webster wants more. He swindles his uncle into signing a contract that turns all control over to him. Says Twain, "Under the preceding contracts Webster had been my paid servant; under the new one I was his slave, his absolute slave, and without salary.

Vanity is another key theme in the book. To extend the Webster example, after he swindles Twain out of his company, Webster takes a number of management actions based on his vanity that eventually sink the company. These actions include insisting on expensive offices that are larger than necessary and publishing all books that are offered directly to him, not Twain.

After the huge success of the Grant book that Twain secured, Webster takes the credit for its success. Other characters also exhibit vanity, most notably Twain himself. When one of his friends asks him if he can name the American author with the most widespread popularity, Twain notes, "I thought I could but it didn't seem to me that it would be modest to speak out, in the circumstances.

On another occasion, near the end of his life Twain receives an honorary degree from Oxford. He notes that it is long overdue and that he should have received the degree long before now, because others who are less talented than him have been receiving degrees in the meantime. Says Twain, "I have stood at the head of my guild during all that time, with none to dispute the place with me.

When it comes to discussing the vanity of others, Twain is very quick to criticize, most notably in several chapters about Bret Harte, in which Twain provides examples of Harte's vanity. When a wealthy benefactor of Harte's sends Harte's stack of IOUs back to Harte, offering to wipe Harte's debt clean as an act of friendship, Harte apparently "fired the bale back at him, accompanying it with a letter which was all afire with insulted dignity.

The theater is down the street, and Twain assumes they will walk. However, Harte, who is wearing some fancy clothes that are badly "out of repair," puts on airs for the hotel clerk and pays him a dollar ten times the normal fee to deliver the play for him. The fragile quality of human life plays an important role in Twain's autobiography. True to the times he lives in, people are susceptible to many fatal and crippling illnesses, including many of Twain's family and friends.

Twain's view of death changes throughout his life. When he is remembering his experiences as a boy, he acts like being saved from death was a bad thing. He talks about his family doctor, claiming that he "saved my life several times. Still, he was a good man and meant well. At one point, Twain remembers a day when he was nine years old and almost drowned in a creek.

A slave woman saved him. He almost drowns several more times before he learns how to swim. Twain notes that he does not know "who the people were who interfered with the intentions of a Providence wiser than themselves," but says he still holds a grudge. When Twain is recounting his experiences as a young man, it appears he is afraid of death.

Autobiography of mark twain volume 1 epub

In San Francisco, after he is issued a challenge to fight in a duel, Twain is concerned that if his opponent shows up he might die as a result. In this case, providence is on Twain's side: "I don't know what the bird thought about that interposition of Providence but I felt very, very comfortable with it. As an adult, when he witnesses the deaths of many family members, he regards death as negative.

Later, in another passage about his wife's death, he laments some more, "She was my life, and she is gone; she was my riches, and I am a pauper. Although Twain is flippant or scared about his own brushes with death, the death of his family hits him hard, and there is no mistaking his feelings about it at the end of the book. In the final chapter, which is devoted entirely to the topic of death, Twain remarks that even if he could, he would not bring back his deceased daughter: "If a word would do it, I would beg for the strength to withhold the word.

Although Charles Neider's version of the The Autobiography of Mark Twain is organized chronologically, the material within each chapter still reflects Twain's original intent to impose no structure on the material other than that which was created by his freeform dictations. This lack of formal organization forces the reader to pay greater attention to details, since the details are not neatly packaged.

The lack of formal organization also creates links between subjects that might not be there in a truly chronological autobiography, and thus provides an insight into the author's thought patterns. For example, in the chapter where Twain first talks about his mother, he describes her extreme compassion, writing, "my mother would not have allowed a rat to be restrained of its liberty.

What is the purpose of this abrupt switch in narrative? One imagines Twain dictating this passage, with an image of the rat his mother would try to save. It could be at this point that he starts to think about rats in general, and how rats are usually associated with poor conditions. This would provide the link to the paragraph about poverty.

In any case, analyzing the text in this manner, especially at points where Twain abruptly switches topics, helps the reader to get inside Twain's head and understand his intentions better. If all of the recollections of Twain's mother were included in one chapter and all of the recollections of his poverty were kept in a separate chapter, the book would have an entirely different feel.

Twain was known as a humorist and demonstrated a playful quality in most of his writings. This is evident throughout the book, in which he uses humorous phrases to describe situations, such as when wasps are crawling up the leg of a boy so stricken with shyness by some girls in the room that he cannot move. Twain describes the wasps as "prospecting around," and says that "one group of excursionists after another climbed up Jim's legs and resented even the slightest wince or squirm that he indulged himself with in his misery.

But Twain's humor also has a sharp edge to it when it is aimed at somebody else. He does this when he wants to vilify someone whom he feels has wronged him. For example, when explaining that Webster's business manager at the publishing company came from the same town as Webster and his lawyer, Twain says, "We got all our talents from that stud farm at Dunkirk.

By referring to the three young men who sink the business as "talents" who came from a "stud farm," Twain is suggesting just the opposite—that the men have no talent and they come from low stock. One of the reasons The Autobiography of Mark Twain continues to engage readers is its detailed, first-person account of the historical events of the time.

Twain lived during formative years in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when America was experiencing growing pains and defining its national identity. It is no surprise that Twain and his brother Orion were able to find work in the newspaper industry, which experienced rapid growth in the nineteenth century. This growth was due to a number of developments, including the increased use of advertising to subsidize printing costs, an increase in the number of news correspondents using the telegraph to wire in the latest national news, and the establishment of the Associated Press.

The importance of newspapers and other forms of rapid communication increased with the advent of the Civil War, when existing newspapers on both sides of the conflict promoted their cause in print. The Civil War was the single, bloodiest fight that America has ever experienced. From tomore than six hundred thousand Americans died in this war which pitted brother against brother—sometimes literally, as some families were divided in their loyalties to North and South.

Although the secession of the southern states from the Union started the war, divided views over slavery caused the South to secede. The South viewed the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in as a threat to its way of life—most notably the institution of slavery, which provided the massive labor force that fueled the lucrative southern cotton trade.

The majority of casualties in the war came from disease, which thrived among the troops on both sides. Second to disease as a cause of death in the war were battlefield injuries and a lack of medical knowledge, experience, and preparation. Medicine in the nineteenth century was largely undeveloped, and medical education was not yet regulated.

American physicians had, at this time, little knowledge of the cause and prevention of disease and infection. Even in cities, away from the crude setting of the battlefront, medicine was largely guesswork and people easily succumbed to many fatal and crippling illnesses. In this autobiography, Twain gives some examples from his own experiences.

His father gets caught out in a storm on a trip home and dies from pleurisy, an inflammation in the pleura due to a prolonged lung infection. Twain's wife falls on the ice when she is a teenager, and as a result is an invalid for the rest of her life. His brother, Henry, is given an overdose of morphine, which kills him. In one of the most heart-wrenching passages of the book, Twain recalls his responsibility for the death of his first-born child, Langdon.

Twain took his son out for a drive on a cold morning and forgot to check on him. He and the coachman wrap up the child again, but the effects of the cold proved fatal. As Resa Willis notes in her book, Mark and Livy, Langdon's death was "caused by diphtheria, the disease that took so many children in the nineteenth century and for which no antitoxin would be developed until To understand the critical reception of The Autobiography of Mark Twainone must examine the context in which all of the versions were created and released, the intentions of each editor, and the debate over the works that continues today.

Twain's autobiography, in the form that he intended it to be released, exists in the form of a massive, ,word typescript he created in the final years of his life. The manuscript is largely composed of nonchronological, freeform dictations that Twain made to Albert Bigelow Painehis official biographer, from until his death in During these dictations, Twain would say whatever came into his mind, mixing present and past events as he saw fit.

Says E. Hudson Long in his Mark Twain Handbook, "Mark's intentions were to make his autobiography a combination of daily diary and memories from the past, a contrast he believed would add interest. Twain assembled his dictations, along with other autobiographical writings from the past, into the typescript, which he continued to work on until his death.

It was not untilfourteen years after Twain's death, that Paine published a portion of the typescript as Mark Twain's Autobiography. Paine deliberately removed items from the work that he thought might be too controversial, in some cases instructed by the Twain estate to do so, but left the rest in the unconventional order of composition that Twain had intended rather than the true chronological order that most autobiographies follow.

This hybrid approach led to mixed reviews. As Charles Neider notes in the introduction to his version of Twain's autobiography, most reviewers commented negatively about the lack of order, although some critics found good things to say about the writing itself and criticized Paine for leaving out some sections. In Bernard DeVoto published his version of the autobiography, Mark Twain in Eruptionwhich left out all of the material from Paine's version, and only included part of the remaining manuscript.

He edited his version heavily, imposing a thematic order on it that was directly contrary to Twain's intentions. He did, however, include some of the controversial items that Paine left out, which whetted critics' appetites. Atlantic Monthly critic Robert M. Gay read the book eagerly, "half expecting to find a chamber of horrors. In it, I suspected, we should at last get to the bottom of Mark Twain's tragic mystery which we have heard so much about.

In Neider tackled the typescript. Like DeVoto, Neider ignored Twain's original intentions and imposed his own views on how the autobiography should be organized. Neider's version included some published material from the previous versions and some new selections from the typescript. Nation critic Kenneth Rexroth reviewed Neider's version with the same mixed feelings that the other two versions had received:.

What is there to say about this book? It is a more coherent collection of Mark Twain's random reminiscences than the Paine or DeVoto volumes, but it omits some of the political and social criticism that DeVoto printed and that is certainly important to an understanding of Mark Twain. Today: Americans unite in their support of the war on international terrorism, instigated by a terrorist act on September 11,that claimed the lives of several thousand Americans.

This new kind of war relies heavily on behind-the-scenes intelligence efforts, and the use of military ground forces and air strikes. Today: Many Americans travel to all parts of the autobiography of mark twain volume 1 epub for both work and pleasure. The fastest form of commercial air travel, the supersonic Concorde, can travel at more than two thousand miles per hour.

Today: Many celebrities find a wide audience for their ideas on television talk shows, and most have an agent or manager who books engagements for them. Twentieth-first century critics look forward to the publication of Twain's complete autobiographical typescript—disorganized structure, margin notes, and all—so that they can make their own estimations about whether or not Twain's idea to publish such an unconventional autobiography was a good one.

In his article, "Mark Twain and Collaborative Autobiography," Michael Kiskis argues that the time has come to stop relying on editors' interpretations and let Twain's entire version be published. Says Kiskis, "We should turn away from the seductive prospect of retelling his story by adjusting his words and return to the original materials to understand the complex process in which Clemens was engaged.

Poquette has a bachelor's degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette proposes a model for divining the truth in Twain's autobiography. How does one go about reading The Autobiography of Mark Twain? Noted by generations of critics and readers alike for its sprawling collection of experiences that lack an obvious structure, the work has also been studied with a historical microscope to determine what facts hold up under inspection.

Indeed, even while the bulk of the material was being dictated to Albert Bigelow Paine, the biographer himself had doubts as to its authenticity. As Michael Kiskis notes in his article, "Mark Twain and Collaborative Autobiography," "Paine came to believe that the material was infected by dramatization, a belief that drove a wedge between his work as biographer and Clemens's as autobiographer.

To some extent, this should have been expected, given Twain's profession. Twain was known for his "tall tales" in both his fictional works and semi-autobiographical travel works, and the tendency to embellish his life for the amusement of others was—by the time of the autobiographical dictations—instinct. Twain may not be alone in this instinct.

Speaking about autobiographies in general, Alvin P. Sanoff notes in his article "Autobiography and the Craft of Embellishment" that "scholars are now asking whether autobiographers actually bare their souls or whether their works are every bit as much a product of the imagination as a well-crafted novel. However, this does not necessarily mean that one should read Twain's autobiography with a history book or documented biography nearby, although some readers do.

Instead, a reader who wishes to understand the truth within the work should consider focusing on the particular qualities of the words themselves. Perhaps one of Twain's own quotes sums it up best. In an excerpt from a conversation to his friend, William Dean Howellsreproduced in Kaplan's book, Twain says "The remorseless truth is there, between the lines.

If reading between the lines is the trick to understanding the truth of Twain's autobiography, then there must be some formula, some focusing point, with which to view the work to find its autobiography of mark twain volume 1 epub, or hidden meaning. Indeed, when one examines the situations in the book in light of their relative quality of humor, a possible formula presents itself.

Specifically, Twain uses three different levels of humor in his autobiography—mild humor, vicious humor, and the total lack of humor—all of which give an indication of how truthful the account is. When Twain uses mild humor, there is good reason to believe that he is embellishing the truth, if not manufacturing the entire story, telling the equivalent of a harmless white lie to benefit the narrative.

There are many examples of mild humor in the text. In the narrative, when Twain almost takes part in a duel, he acts like he is worried and says of his opponent, "If the duel had come off he would have so filled my skin with bullet holes that it wouldn't have held my principles. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind.

In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain's works, UC Press is proud to offer for the first time Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography in its entirety and exactly as he left it. This major literary event brings to readers, admirers, and scholars the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

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